Banks: The Audacity of Hope

Optimism that banks' fortunes have reached bottom may be premature.

Lloyd Blankfein may travel by train rather than private jet these days, but the firm he heads has moved back into the fast lane. On April 13th Goldman Sachs kicked off the banks' earnings season in impressive fashion: the $1.8 billion of net profit it posted for the first quarter smashed analysts' forecasts, leaving them wondering, if only for a moment, whether they were back in 2006. At the same time, Goldman cheekily raised more than $5 billion of common equity to help pay back the $10 billion of taxpayer money it was arm-twisted into taking last October.

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